


Edge of Chaos

by andthatisterrible



Series: Chaos Theory [5]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Shootweek18
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-05-13 14:37:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14750769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andthatisterrible/pseuds/andthatisterrible
Summary: Set some time after (but not too far after) the events of Sliding Towards Chaos. Things get exciting for the Mayhem Triplets when a relevant number turns out to be a former Samaritan agent. Murder, mischief, and plenty of mayhem follow.





	1. When Shaw Kills Something, It Stays Dead

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this as part of #shootweek18. It's 6 chapters in all, completely written already, and will be posting one a day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all, welcome or welcome back to the Chaos AU. If you haven't read any of the other works in this collection after Sliding Towards Chaos, don't worry, there's not much you need to know. I think the only relevant detail is that at some point between the events of STC and this fic, Root gifted John with an alarming number of kittens.

_The term edge of chaos is used to denote a transition space between order and disorder that is hypothesized to exist within a wide variety of systems. This transition zone between the two regimes is known as the edge of chaos, a region of bounded instability that engenders a constant dynamic interplay between order and disorder._

 

* * *

 

 

Shaw fumbled around in the dark, trying to find her cell phone as it buzzed obnoxiously on the hotel night stand.

“Root?”

“Sorry, just me.” Reese didn't sound especially sorry, but then it was always hard to tell what he _did_ sound like due to his chronic mumbling.

“It's–” Shaw pulled her phone back briefly to check the time. “–4am. Why the fuck are you calling me?” As soon as she asked, she realized what his call had to pertain to. “What did Root do now?”

“It's 7 on this coast,” he said, as if that somehow justified everything. “And she killed someone.”

“You woke me up to tell me Root killed someone? Really?” Sure the Machine frowned on them killing people which meant Root more or less tried not to, but shit still happened and missions got out of hand and sometimes that involved a dead body or two. (Or eleven. But there had been reasons for that. Good reasons). “Tell her to kill you next. I'm going back to sleep.”

“It was a relevant number.”

Oh.

Shaw thought that through for a few long, sleepy seconds.

“Let me guess, the ISA found out and they're pissed.”

“She stabbed the guy in the throat right as an ISA team walked in the door with orders to detain and question him.”

Leave it to Root to choose the most dramatic way possible to make a mess of things. Shaw struggled upright and clicked on the bedside light. She had a feeling she wasn't going to be allowed to sleep anymore tonight.

“Is the ISA team still alive?”

“Yeah, though they both got tased while she was making her getaway.”

“Control must be so pleased. Where's Root now?” She wasn't surprised it was Reese calling her. This sounded like one of those things Root would wave off as no big deal and try to sort out on her own.

“The ISA is pretty intent on having a chat with her. I put her under house arrest until we sort this out. Subway arrest actually since it's basically a fortress.”

“ _You_ did?” It was an obvious lie (or at least an omission) since Reese was clearly not dead or unconscious.

“I got the Machine to help with that part. She asked Root to lay low until you get back tomorrow night.”

Shaw’s phone beeped at her and she took it away from her ear to check it, already knowing exactly what she'd find. Sure enough, she now had a ticket on a plane leaving in two hours.

“By some completely random and inexplicable coincidence my flight just got bumped up and I'll be back a bit sooner.”

“Guess the Machine is worried Root won't sit still for long.”

“Guess so.” Shaw slid out of bed and started gathering up the few possessions she'd unpacked to shove back in her bag. “You know why she killed this guy? Who was he anyway?”

There was a suspicious amount of silence from the other end of the line.

“Reese? Who did she kill?”

“As far as I know, he was a former Samaritan agent.”

Shaw paused in the middle of cramming a hoodie in her bag. “A former Samaritan agent was a relevant number?” Might explain why Root had been so stab-happy.

“Seems that way.”

“Well, shit.”

* * *

 

The apartment was quiet and empty when Shaw opened the door. She'd half-expected to be knocked over by either Root or Bear (or both) the second she stepped in, but nothing stirred in the living room.

She’d planned on heading straight to the subway to talk to Root and the Machine and get briefed on the whole mess, but the Machine had texted her when she'd landed at JFK to tell her that Root was back at their apartment.

Since the best way to get Root to leave a place was to tell her she was required to stay there, the fact she'd blown off waiting in the subway didn't surprise Shaw in the slightest.

What did surprise her was how clean the living room was. Usually Root's stuff was everywhere (Shaw had found a hard drive in the freezer once), but currently Shaw didn't see any evidence that anyone even lived there besides herself.

Odd and a bit troubling, but not the most important issue at the moment.

The door to Root's room was shut and no one answered the soft knock. She pulled the door open a crack to peer in.

It was dark inside (Root's blackout curtains that she never opened kept the remains of the late afternoon light out), and only Root's dumb plasma globe was easily visible. Shaw moved over towards the bed, being careful not to fall over the many wires running across the floor or the piles of clothes haphazardly strewn about.

Root was sound asleep, curled up on her side under the covers, and Shaw relaxed a little, some of the tension she'd been carrying since Reese’s phone call easing away.

It had been weird being the one away on a trip for once. It wasn't unusual for Root to run off on some mission for the Machine in a different state or country even, but Shaw still largely operated in the city. The trip to Seattle had been an oddity, and even though she'd enjoyed getting to go somewhere for once, there was a certain satisfaction in being back. In having this life to come back to.

She’d originally planned to wake Root up and dive right into sorting out the whole ISA situation, but….

She stripped off most of her clothes, but paused before climbing into the bed. She stumbled over to the wall as quietly as she could manage and spent a few brief minutes cursing silently until she found the cord for the damn plasma globe and ripped it out of the wall. Why did Root even have that thing?

Root stirred when she sat down on the edge of the bed.

“Shaw?” Her voice was rough with sleep.

“You expecting someone else? Go back to sleep.”

Root scooched away from her on the bed to make room and lifted the covers invitingly. As soon as Shaw joined her, she shuffled back over towards her and curled up against her.

“Hear you've been causing trouble,” Shaw murmured as she ran one hand down Root's side and let it come to rest on her hip. It felt good to have her within touching distance again, like a weight of worry had been lifted from her.

“Didn't want you to get bored.” Root didn't sound fully awake. She nudged her way further into Shaw so her face was pressed up against Shaw's collar bone.

“Never boring with you around.”

Root’s arms tightened around her. “Missed you.” It was so quiet Shaw almost didn't hear it.

“You missed me so much you stabbed someone to get me home faster.”

“It worked, didn't it?”

“You're such a brat.”

She felt Root smile against her.

“We'll figure it out when we wake up,” Shaw said. Because falling asleep here after a week of sleeping in strange hotel beds and a long, uncomfortable flight sounded much more appealing than whatever the hell was going on out there in the rest of the world.

“Mmmhmm.” Root was already mostly asleep again.

Shaw settled in a little more–warm and content–and let her eyes close.

* * *

 

Reese stopped by with dinner that evening after they'd gotten up from their nap. He and Root were pulling boxes of takeout out of a bag and setting them on the living room coffee table when Shaw got out of the shower.

It should have been weird, having Reese over for a casual meal in the apartment she shared with Root. Everything about the situation should have felt alien to her–after all she hadn't had much in the way of sit down dinners in her own home since she was a kid. And while there was a slight uneasiness at how bizarre the situation was (still was, since this was hardly the first time Reese had been over), she didn't feel any desire to leave or shut herself in her room. The knowledge that some part of her had changed or, perhaps more accurately, adapted to a new rhythm of life startled her from time to time.

Bear noticed her standing in the living room entrance first and his nails clattered on the hardwood floor as he ran over. He'd been at Reese’s earlier that day, playing with the herd of kittens that ruled over Reese’s life now.

Bear's entire tail wagged so forcefully that his body shook from it. She hunkered down to get in some quality petting time while he licked her face.

“Welcome back,” Reese said when she looked up to find both of them watching her.

Reese looked away almost immediately, but Root just kept staring right at her, an enormous glowing smile spread across her face like she hadn't seen her in months and they hadn't woken up in bed together only thirty minutes ago. Shaw focused back on Bear, scratching his neck and enjoying the happy little dog whimpers. She thought about how when Bear was extra excited and wagged his tail, his whole body seemed to wag with it. And how when Root smiled at her it felt like every inch of Root was behind the force of that smile.

“One of you going to tell me what happened?” Shaw asked when they were all settled around the coffee table a short while later. Reese had declined the offer of a chair and was sitting on the floor, fighting a losing battle with his chopsticks. Root sat next to Shaw on the couch, their legs touching the tiniest bit. “I’ve barely been gone a week and you two managed to land us in a mess.” To be fair, Root had caused most of the drama, but Reese was unofficially supposed to have kept her out of trouble.

“The ISA got in touch with us a few days ago,” Reese started when it became clear that Root wasn't going to. “Gave us their courtesy heads up that they'd have agents in town on a number this week.”

It was the part of the deal that they'd made post-Samaritan that Shaw was the most surprised the ISA had kept. Of course the Machine would always know if ISA operatives were in the city, but the fact Control had agreed to warn them and was carrying through on it so far was unexpected.

“And you looked into the number?” They usually did, just in case.

Reese shrugged and switched out the chopsticks for a fork. He'd made it a whole ten minutes before giving up this time. A new record.

“Briefly. He turned out to be some software security engineer type who knew how to handle a gun. I couldn't figure out why he'd be relevant.”

“So you asked Root to help out.” Shaw turned to Root for confirmation.

“He worked for Samaritan before the Machine took over all its assets and shut it down,” Root explained as she poked suspiciously at a piece of sauce-covered vegetable. “From what the Machine told me, his level of clearance meant he knew what Samaritan actually was. Obviously I had to look into him.”

“Do we know why he was relevant?”

“The Machine was worried he was involved in an effort to build another AI.” Something about the way Root said it made Shaw suspect there was more to it than that, but she'd been dealing with Root long enough now that she knew that sometimes it was necessary to unpack things in stages with her.

“Why give him to the ISA then? I mean I guess building a new AI is a relevant threat, but dealing with that stuff is kind of our...thing.”

“It was a test.” Root pressed her lips into a thin line. “They failed it.”

Reese looked uncomfortable. “Isn't it kind of weird that the Machine is...testing people?” His voice dropped to a whisper at the end as if that would somehow keep the Machine from hearing him over the various cellphones, microphones, and other devices scattered about. Not to mention Root's implant.

“She wanted to see what they'd do if presented with the opportunity to look into another AI,” Root explained. She didn't sound particularly put out by Reese's question. “And what they did was plan to detain him in an attempt to get their hands on what he was working on.”

She met Reese's eyes across the table. “They didn't fail because they wanted to question him. They failed because they were actively taking steps that could lead to the reemergence of Samaritan or something like it. And She's not going to punish them or anything–that's not how She works–but She won't give them any more numbers like this again.”

Reese nodded, easily accepting the explanation. He did seem to mostly trust the Machine these days, but the amount of power and potential for destruction she possessed still made him nervous from time to time. The fact she enjoyed pranking him probably didn't help anything.

“Did she have you hunt down the number after she found out what the ISA was up to?” Shaw asked to keeping things moving along.

She didn't want to sit through another three hour discussion of AI morality–Reese and Root could do that shit while she was out of town. Any questions she had about the Machine's motives she'd take right to the AI herself and demand some solid, un-cryptic answers. So far the Machine had been more than willing to play along with that, and Shaw had come to rather enjoy their conversations (not that she'd admit that out loud).

“Not exactly.” Root looked a tiny bit guilty, an unusual look on her. “I may have gone after him myself before She knew what they were up to. But the important thing is it all ended up just fine. The ISA doesn't have him and the Machine knows She can't trust them with things like that.”

There was more there to examine, but Shaw added it to the list of things to pry out of Root later. Root going against the Machine's wishes to kill a number sounded like a complicated topic, one which Root probably didn't want to go into in front of Reese.

“What's the status with the ISA now?”

“They're really not happy,” Reese said with a grimace.

Next to Shaw on the couch, Root smirked, evidently immensely pleased with herself. “You should reprimand Hersh, Sameen. I took down two of his agents in less than a minute with only a taser. They didn't even have a chance to fight back. Their standards have slipped since you left. Although–” Root's smirk widened. “–I guess I did the same to you when we first met.”

Shaw kicked her lightly in the shin in an effort to wipe the smugness off her face. If anything it had the opposite effect.

“Control is demanding that we turn Root over to her for questioning,” Reese continued as if none of that had happened. “Which would obviously be a, uh, really bad idea.”

Shaw snorted softly. That was an understatement. Not only would Root do her damned best to rip apart anyone trying to detain her (especially if it was Control), but Reese would never stand for it, and the Machine would probably get involved, too. And then whatever was left of the ISA would have Shaw to deal with.

“Harper and Hersh spent a lot of time bickering about it and then Hersh spent a lot of time getting yelled at by Control, but the end result is they're not doing anything until they have a chance to talk to us. We've got a meeting set for tomorrow afternoon.”

“What’re we supposed to get out of some meeting with them?” Shaw asked. “Their guy is dead, we're not giving them Root, game over.”

“Smoothing ruffled feathers, I suppose,” Root said unenthusiastically. “She says we need to go.”

“Ugh. Fine.” She briefly considered sending Claire instead (let Control deal with her moodiness for a few hours), but with Root's safety on the line that wasn't a real option. “But the Machine owes us a vacation after this.”

* * *

 

While Root rather enjoyed Reese's company, she was extremely relieved when he finally left for the night and she was alone with Shaw. And Her, of course.

Usually she was the one travelling, where the mission and running around helped keep her distracted, but this time she'd been the one stuck waiting. She hadn't much cared for it.

Which was partly why she'd put all the extra effort into finding out about the relevant number. She'd needed something to keep her mind busy.

“Maybe I should go out of town more often,” Shaw said. She was sprawled out on her back across her bed, staring at the ceiling.

“Why's that?” Root asked as casually as she could manage.

“Whole apartment was clean when I got back. Thought I was hallucinating.”

Root chuckled and came over to stand next to the bed and look down at her. “Next time I'll trash the place.”

Shaw propped herself up on her elbows. “You even did the dishes.” Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Or didn't use any dishes the whole time.”

“I stayed at the subway a lot, so all the mess happened there. John was outraged.” Mostly John had been outraged that she'd made Claire keep everything clean. What was the point of having junior team members if she couldn't delegate menial chores to them?

Shaw tilted her head to one side. “You know this place is yours, too, right? It doesn't stop being your apartment when I'm away.”

Root turned away and went to fuss with a drawer that wasn't completely closed. “It's too quiet when I'm here by myself.” It was more than that. The whole place felt gaping and empty without Shaw. She felt like an intruder, tiptoeing around the apartment.

“Oh right, because I make so much noise usually.” Shaw sounded amused and Root turned back to see a slight smile on her face.

“Sometimes you do.” She raised an eyebrow suggestively.

Shaw rolled her eyes, but she was still smiling. Root gave up her pretense of fidgeting with the drawer and went back to her. She put her hands on the bed on either side of Shaw so she could lean over her and Shaw fell back on the bed, her hands coming up to rest on Root's hips.

Shaw looked so calm under her, so at ease. Root indulged in a long moment of shamelessly checking her out (she'd had to go a whole week with only her extensive multimedia Shaw footage collection to get her by). Shaw’s hair was back in its habitual ponytail, but slightly messy from how she was lying on the bed. Her face was relaxed and the hint of a smile was on her lips. No high res photos or videos the Machine could find her of Shaw came close to comparing to the real deal.

Root leaned forward so her lips were right by Shaw’s ear. “Wanna make a racket?”

Shaw’s breath hitched a little, and her hands tightened their hold on Root.

“Okay, but first you're going to tell me the rest of the stuff you left out earlier.”

Root stiffened and started to pull back, but Shaw tugged insistently on her until she took the hint and let herself be pulled down on top of Shaw. They both shifted around a little to get comfortable, and Root hid a smile against Shaw's neck.

Shaw wasn't usually the one to instigate cuddling (which Root knew this absolutely was, no matter how Shaw might try to deny it), but Root had noticed an increase in Shaw initiating more casual physical contact since Samaritan’s defeat. It still wasn't often, and she was usually a little stiff or awkward about it, but the gestures were unmistakable and the fact Shaw was making them for her made her ache with gratitude.

She would do anything to protect Shaw. Anything.

After a few quiet minutes of matching her breathing to Shaw's, Root finally answered.

“He wanted to rebuild Samaritan. Not just build another AI. Samaritan specifically.”

“Okay, but he was one guy and not even one of Samaritan’s top guys, right?”

All true and logical, but…. “It's not worth the risk. Especially not if the ISA got involved. Nothing's worth that.”

One of Shaw's hands had crept under the back of her shirt and was splayed across her lower back. Shaw did stuff like this sometimes after Root had been away, touched her like she was assuring herself that Root was here and okay. It was endearing, but it also made Root feel a little guilty.

She didn't want Shaw to have to worry, and she really was trying to play it safe. Safer, anyway. But when she'd thought about the possibility of Samaritan ever coming back, about it coming after them, after the Machine and Shaw, about something like the stock exchange happening again….

She tightened her grip on Shaw. “It's not worth it,” she said again. “And there's something else.”

“Thought there might be.”

“He wasn't the only one. There's a group of them, former Samaritan agents, trying to rebuild it. Four others that She's counted. They're good at hiding from Her because they know how She works, so She isn't sure where their base of operations is. Somewhere in New York City, definitely. Probably Manhattan or Brooklyn, or possibly even Queens. They move around a lot.”

Shaw didn't respond for a few minutes and Root let herself relax more fully onto her, Shaw's steady heartbeat loud under her ear.

“You think they could actually pull that off?” Shaw asked at last.

“I'm not sure. There was always an extremely high chance that Samaritan hid away some copies of its core code somewhere offline for safe keeping. The Machine is constantly watching just in case one emerges. If they found one….” She thought about the man she'd stabbed yesterday. “It won't matter if I kill them all.”

“Not something you’re going to be doing alone.”

Root picked her head up to look Shaw in the eyes. “You'd help?”

Shaw scowled. “Of course I'm going to help keep Samaritan from coming back. When I kill something, it stays dead. You think I'd sit that out?”

“No, of course not, but…” She chewed on her lip. “The Machine doesn't want me to kill them. She says that I can't just go around killing anyone who's trying to build an AI.”

“Well, does she have a better suggestion in this case? Because putting these guys in jail is the same as handing them over to the ISA.”

“She...not yet.” The Machine was playing slightly agitated music in her ear. It was a...discussion they'd had a few times over the last day. An argument, if she was being honest. But she wouldn't, couldn't let anything happen to Her or Shaw or Reese. She'd kill a lot of people to keep them safe.

“If she gets a better idea, I'll hear it,” Shaw said, “but until then, I agree. Not worth the risk of leaving them alive.”

Root put her head back down on Shaw's chest to hide her relief. She'd hoped Shaw would say that, believed she would, but there was always the tiniest thread of worry in her no matter who she was dealing with that she wouldn't be listened to, would be dismissed. That no one would believe her until it was far too late.

Shaw rolled them over without warning and Root yelped slightly in surprise.

“Tomorrow we’ll deal with the ISA and get a lead on these former Samaritan guys,” Shaw said firmly as if it were as easy as that. “But since we can't do anything about it tonight….” She cocked her head to one side and grinned and after a moment Root returned the smile.

“Tonight I'm gonna explain to you again how everything in the apartment is yours as well.” Shaw’s grin was mischievous.

Root could tell she didn't mean that in any Serious Talk type of way so she played along. “Oh, really? How're you planning to do that?”

“We're going to be jointly staking a claim to every piece of furniture in this apartment.”

“What, all of them in one night?” If they really tried that they'd probably need to replace a few pieces. She didn't think the little table by the door would survive the method of staking a claim that Shaw was implying. “Hmm, I suppose if we’re too exhausted to move tomorrow Reese will have to deal with the ISA on his own. Such a shame.”

Shaw leaned down to bite lightly at one of her ear lobes. “We can make a good start anyway. Got a whole week to make up for.”

“Is that your way of saying you missed me, sweetie?”

She’d been joking, but Shaw pulled back to look at her. “No, that would just be me saying I missed you. Because I did.”

Root didn't get a chance to respond since Shaw immediately followed up by kissing her, bruisingly hard, but she rather suspected that was on purpose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [quote source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_of_chaos#cite_note-2)


	2. He Ran Into Her Knife Ten Times

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning: mild self-defenestration

Even though Root had cranked up the bad innuendo to eleven since Shaw's return, Reese was still grateful for the change. Root had been sullen the entire time Shaw was out of town, and, even worse, bored.

Bored Root was the stuff of nightmares. They were lucky they'd gotten off with only a single stabbing.

She'd wrecked all sorts of minor havoc in the subway, (including a somewhat manic cleaning session that had made him incredibly nervous. Root cleaning things was unquestionably a harbinger of the end times), terrorized their trainees, had a profoundly disturbing one-sided conversation with Bear about the best way to dismember a grown man, and then decided to hack the ISA for “the lolz” as she’d put it (hopefully Control never found out).

He'd take having to occasionally witness her grab Shaw’s ass over all of that.

There were parts of the whole stabbing thing that Root had glossed over during dinner, but he figured Shaw knew her well enough to figure that out. The incident had been his monthly reminder that Root, even when she acted like an eccentric but lovable juvenile delinquent, was actually quite terrifying.

He'd found out about the stabbing when he'd discovered Root washing blood off her hands (and knife) in the sink in the subway.

“What happened?”

Root hadn't even paused. “Well, I had to leave rather quickly so I didn't have time to clean up until now.”

He should have expected that sort of typical Root non-answer.

“Leave where? Whose blood is that?” He'd been glad to confirm it wasn't Root's since he hadn’t fancied having Shaw kick his ass when she got home.

“The relevant number, John.” Root had said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “He used to work for Samaritan so I had to kill him.”

That had been too much to process all at once, so he'd gone for an easy question. “Why not shoot him?”

“I was out of bullets.” Root had finally looked up at him and grinned, all her teeth bared. “Also it was more fun this way.”

Harper had shown up at that point, fresh from talking to Hersh about the stabbing incident, and he'd had to go divert her. He hadn't wanted Root getting any more involved while she was still on some murder high.

Later he'd found her staring into space, a worried wrinkle creasing her forehead. He'd brought her a clean shirt from her subway room (it was one of Shaw's but he’d figured that might have been a good thing right then) since she hadn't seemed in any hurry the change out of the blood-stained one she had on, and then popped out for a few minutes to get her dinner. While she'd been distracted by the food, he'd had a chat with the Machine and then Shaw, unsure he could handle her on his own.

But Shaw was back now, and while that didn’t make Root any less volatile, it did mean someone who could usually reason with her was taking the lead. He'd been relying on the Machine for that, but they seemed to be having a difference in opinions over this matter.

“You sure you want to come?” Shaw asked Root as they walked down the street towards the neutral territory they'd agreed on for the meeting. “Control is probably going to be a dick, and we're not supposed to kill her.”

“It'll be fine, Sameen.” Root had a faint, wispy smile on her face that made Reese nervous. He really hoped she didn't stab Control.

He wondered if the reason Shaw had asked Root something similar three times now actually had anything to do with concern over Root keeping her homicidal tendencies in check, or if instead it was related to the fact Control had once tortured Root.

Root never talked about that, but he remembered the slight hesitation she'd had back when they'd gone to make a deal with Control ages ago (before Samaritan had even come online. It felt like a lifetime ago).

It was so odd how she simultaneously made him worried she'd kill someone and worried about keeping her safe.

“This is it,” Shaw said as she came to a halt in front of a Starbucks.

The ISA had commandeered an entire Starbucks for the meeting. He wondered if they'd kept a barista around or if they were going to have to fend for themselves on the coffee front.

As it turned out, they'd brought along their own barista with security clearance (Reese wondered if the guy had ever made coffee before in his life), but he was reserved for keeping Control supplied with fresh tea and ignored the rest of them. Two other people who were also definitely not baristas lurked behind the counter with him.

Control was seated at the only real table in the place, Hersh and some other agent he didn't recognize–a woman with short, blond hair–standing behind her. Root and Shaw both took seats at the table, but he decided to stay standing, mirroring Hersh. It would be easier to help out from here if it came to a fight.

“I see you've brought her along,” Control said to Shaw. “Good. That should make things easier.”

“You mean so you can thank Root in person for dealing with your relevant number?”

He couldn't see Shaw's face from where he was standing, but he wondered if there was a smirk on it. One of Control's eyes twitched fractionally, but otherwise her face remained composed.

“She interfered in government business and murdered a civilian we were interested in questioning.”

“I prevented you from attempting to secure a means to make a second AI,” Root corrected, “which, if I'm not mistaken, is a violation of the deal you made with Shaw and the Machine.”

The deal had specified the ISA wasn't allowed to attempt to harm the Machine, and, while a second AI would be indirect harm, it definitely qualified as an act of aggression.

“We were gathering intel on a potential threat…”

Shaw cut her off. “Bullshit. You still think you can somehow get an AI with the power and scope of the Machine and control it. Apparently you didn't learn a damn thing from Samaritan.”

Control's eyes narrowed. “Are you suggesting that the Machine will stop giving us numbers now because we...displeased it? How exactly is that better than Samaritan?”

“If She stops giving you numbers it will be because you broke your bargain. You don't get to twist the wording in your favor here,” Root said. She sounded like her usual condescending self and was relatively relaxed in her chair, which Reese took as a good sign.

“Why don't you tell us what it is you want out of this little meeting,” Shaw said. “Because right now you're just wasting our time.”

“Your associate murdered a man in cold blood. Extremely violently, I was told. Stabbed him multiple times.”

“Whoops,” Root said with a dreamy little smile. “What can I say? Some people just need a good stabbing.”

Control ignored her and barreled onwards. “Under the original deal we made with you, you and your associates have a certain level of immunity when it comes to bending the rules, but we can't continue to offer that sort of protection to a homicidal maniac.”

Shaw snorted. “Oh please, because you usually offer the relevant numbers a nice cup of tea and a pep talk about cleaning up their act. I used to handle those numbers for you. I know exactly how they end.”

Reese knew better than to underestimate Shaw, but he was still damned impressed by how well she'd been controlling the discussion. She'd had Control on the defensive since the moment they'd sat down. She might complain about not wanting to be in charge (and she certainly dodged a lot of the people management part of the job when it came to the new recruits), but that didn't mean she wasn't good at it.

“That’s not the point…” Control started.

Shaw didn't let her finish. “No, the point here is that the threat to relevant security this time was posed not only by the number, but by the ISA messing around in things they shouldn't be. You should be glad we only neutralized the number.”

Control's grip on the ridiculous little tea cup she'd been sipping out of tightened to the point where Reese was waiting for it to shatter.

“Was that a threat?” she demanded coldly.

Shaw looked over at Root and they exchanged a shrug and a nod.

“Yeah, sure sounded like it,” Shaw confirmed.

Root’s smile was one of the nastiest Reese had ever seen.

The female agent behind Control tensed and for a second Reese was worried she was going to try and go for her gun, but she settled for glaring at both Root and Shaw in turn.

“I think we're quite done here,” Control said, rising from the table. “Hersh. Schiffmann.”

Hersh hung back for a second as Control swept towards the door, having a quiet but intense argument with her other agent.

“Shaw. Reese. Good to see you again,” Hersh said as if they hadn't just threatened his boss.

Root only got a terse nod from him (she must still have made him nervous), but she’d turned to watch Control leave and wasn't even looking at him.

“If you break our bargain in any way, She's not going to help you anymore,” Root called after her.

Control turned to look back at her. “Is that from you or from the Machine?”

“Both of us.”

Control glared at her and then stormed out the door, Hersh and the other agent following at her heels.

* * *

 

“This guy may have been bent on world domination, but he sure lived in a dump.” Shaw poked gingerly at a pile of unopened mail on the table.

The Machine had gotten them the address of the apartment their former relevant number had been staying at and Shaw had invited Root along to help her investigate.

“There's no computer.” Root looked around the room with a frown. “Either someone got to it first, or he didn't keep it here.”

“Usb drives? CDs? Floppies? Anything?” How did a nerd manage to keep their apartment technology-free?

Root shook her head. “Didn't find anything like that, although there was this.”

She passed a blue post-it note over to Shaw. There were some random characters scrawled across it with no explanation.

“Password to something?”

“Possibly. You'd think someone working in cyber security would know better than to write down their password, but I can't say I'm surprised.” She took the note back and tucked it into the pocket of her leather jacket. “The Machine will see if She can find out what it might be the password to.”

“The Machine, is she okay with all of this?” Shaw had gotten the impression that she and Root were having a bit of a tiff at the moment.

Root shrugged. “She wasn't thrilled that I killed the guy, but She definitely wants to find the rest of his group and make sure we stop another Samaritan from coming online. Our preferred methods of doing that might differ at the moment, but the goal is the same.”

Shaw tossed a couple more credit card junk mail envelopes aside. “Sure, but are you two, uh, okay or whatever?”

Root chuckled. “It’s hardly the first time we've disagreed. We always sort it out eventually. We're adults after all.” She pursed her lips. “Well, sort of.”

Shaw had her own opinions on which one of them the ‘sort of’ applied to but she kept that to herself.

“Wait.” She pulled an envelope out of the stack of mail. “This one has a different address on it. Wasn't sent here originally. Our guy must have brought it back and dumped it with the rest.” She was about to rip it open when a noise from out in the hall caught her attention.

She slipped the envelope into her pocket, pulled her gun out, and exchanged a quick look with Root to make sure they were on the same page.

The man who came through the door obviously hadn't been expecting them by the way he scrambled for his gun. Shaw winged him before he got a chance to draw it and then moved in to disarm him.

“And what business did you have here–” Shaw pulled the guy's wallet out and checked his license while Root kept her gun trained on him. “–Jason Smith?”

Sometimes it was really hard to tell when names were fake and when they were legitimate generic dude names.

The man on the ground had his jaw clenched in pain, but he didn't answer. Shaw only had the slightest of warnings before he struggled to his feet and launched himself at them.

Root’s shot hit him in the leg as he lunged right past them further into the apartment. He staggered and fell forwards a few steps, catching himself on the window ledge. And then he was somehow still propelling himself forwards, right through the screen on the open window and vanishing over the sill. There was a long moment of silence and then a dull thud.

“Well, that was...not exactly how I saw that going,” Shaw said after a minute.

Root wandered over to the window to peer out. “Splat,” she confirmed. “Samaritan agents were always supposed to kill themselves before getting caught. Guess this guy was still following the rules even with the boss dead.”

“We should get out of here. Place will be crawling with cops in a few minutes.”

Root took one last look and then shrugged and left the window. “If we hurry, maybe we can finish searching him before the police arrive. If he has a cellphone I might be able to pull some gps data off of it.”

Shaw followed her out of the apartment and into the stairwell.

“There'll be a crowd out there. It's your turn to be the diversion.” She wasn't completely sure if that was true, but Root was better at diversions anyway. And she did so enjoy getting to be dramatic.

“Sounds like fun.” Root flashed a grin back at her. “But then you always have more fun with me along, don't you?”

Shaw didn't completely manage to stop the smile from turning up the edge of her lips, but she did manage to roll her eyes. “Just watch where you're going, would you?”

* * *

 

It was starting to get dark when they made it back to the subway. Root vanished into the subway car almost immediately to try and salvage the somewhat smashed phone Shaw had found on the corpse.

Shaw poked around the subway for a little while, making sure none of the new recruits had broken anything or raided her snack stash. She invested a solid twenty minutes in playing fetch with Bear (who'd stayed in the subway while they were out earlier), and then finally got bored and went to check on Root's progress.

Root was curled up in the computer chair in front of the monitors. Her knees were drawn up to her chest, her arms looped around them, and her chin rested on one knee. The speaker system in the car was playing quiet music that Shaw recognized as the Machine’s music, part of the private language she shared only with Root. Though now Shaw got to hear it too on occasion,and it occurred to her that she might be the only other person to have ever heard it.

She gave an almost imperceptible nod to the little camera over the monitors and got a brief trill of notes that weren't part of the melody in response.

Root and the Machine might be total nerds with their secret music language, but Shaw could appreciate the simplicity of communication it allowed.

“You get anything off his phone?” she asked when Root tilted her head to look up at her.

“Not a thing. Not surprising that ex-Samaritan types would know how to cover their digital footprints. But we're going to need a different way to find them.”

“Oh. Right.” Shaw dug in her pocket to pull out the envelope she'd stuffed in there earlier. “This match any info the Machine has on them?”

Root examined it. “It's in an area where She's seen some of them before. Might not mean anything, but we've got no other leads.”

“Guess that gives us something to do tomorrow then.”

Root nodded and carefully tore open the top of the envelope and pulled out the folded papers within.

“Just a bunch of promotional fliers and coupons for local stores. Standard junk mail.” She dropped the papers into the desk. “Nothing we can use.”

“The Machine have any luck with that password you found?”

Root shook her head, her hair (which had gotten ridiculously long at some point) swayed back and forth around her with the motion. “She's thinking it might actually be a code for remembering a password. Something that could be translated with a much shorter key that only our recent corpse would know. She's going to try and brute force decrypt it, but that sort of thing takes time, even for Her.”

“Let's head home then. Been a long day.”

She'd woken up this morning curled up around Root’s back and just lain there for a long time feeling drowsy and content while watching Root sleep peacefully next to her. She was ready to go back to that now.

“Shaw?” Root was still staring at the envelope on the table. “I would never ask you to sit a mission out or anything, but…when we went after Samaritan you asked me to promise you I wouldn't take any unnecessary risks...” Root trailed off.

“Unnecessary risks aren't my thing.”

Root didn't say anything and the silence of the stock exchange stretched between them. It was a difference of opinion they'd never been able to reconcile. Shaw couldn’t let something happen to Root if she could prevent if, and Root didn't think she was worth the cost of Shaw's life.

But she'd figured out that her dying for Root wasn't really saving her, that there was some part of Root that wouldn't survive that. It wouldn't keep her from doing just that, but it definitely further complicated the problem. Fortunately it was a problem with a simple solution: she just had to not die. And she was very good at that.

“Samaritan didn't kill me. I'm not planning to let some half-assed attempt to reincarnate it take me out.” It was the best she could do.

“Okay.”

Root didn't sound completely satisfied, and Shaw didn't know what to do. So she moved next to Root and awkwardly patted her on the head once. Her hair was very soft under her fingers and she let her hand come to rest there without really thinking about it. Root gave a tiny sigh and leaned sideways so her head was resting up against Shaw's hip.

“Let's go home,” Shaw suggested again when she started to feel fidgety.

“Home,” Root agreed.

By the time they made it back to their apartment, Root's mood had improved considerably. The absurd discussion about whether or not she could buy little rainboots for Bear (no, no she could not. Root was free to dress herself up in whatever ridiculous things she came across, but Shaw would not allow her to drag Bear into it) had definitely lightened things up some, and she remained relatively cheerful through dinner and the rest of the evening.

Shaw didn't comment on the extra gun Root put on the nightstand, or the unnecessarily enormous bowie knife (when had she gotten that?) she placed on the floor under the bed. She got that Root was unsettled and maybe a tiny bit scared (scared for Shaw and for the Machine. She couldn't remember ever having seen Root scared for herself) and a scared Root was also an excitingly violent Root.

She didn't want Root being upset about the whole thing, but at the same time damn she was really hot when she carelessly waved around the huge knife.

“What time did you want to go check out that address tomorrow?” Shaw asked as they settled into bed for the night. Neither of them had a real schedule when there wasn't a number, but Root liked sleeping in.

“Afternoon maybe?” Root curled up half on top of Shaw, her head tucked in under Shaw's chin.

“Works for me.” Maybe she’d make breakfast while Root wasted half the day snoring.

Root fell asleep only a few minutes later, her body relaxing into Shaw's and her breathing deep and steady. Down at the foot of the bed, Bear gave a little doggy sigh as he got himself comfortable, and from near the door Shaw could see the pinpoint red glow of the camera Root had set up for the Machine (facing out the door to give the illusion of privacy).

She still couldn't quite fathom how she'd gone from being a habitual loner for most of her life to sharing her space with this strange assortment of beings in a relatively short time, but she wasn't complaining right now.

And it was nice to be home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> someday someone will write the control/schiffmann fic the world deserves


	3. They Downloaded The Entire Internet

Shaw woke up to find Root had latched onto her during the night. She was on her back and Root had her arms circled around her (Shaw imagined the blood circulation to the arm under her had probably been cut off) with one hand tangled up in her shirt. Root's whole body was curled into Shaw's and one leg was thrown across Shaw's legs, pinning her down.

Root slept on her all the time, but she rarely clung to her like this. It maybe made her feel a little restless, but she'd been away for a week and now there was this whole Samaritan thing happening so she got why Root might be feeling clingy (even while she slept). And she'd rather deal with feeling slightly claustrophobic than have to worry about Root having a nightmare (it had been 5 months since the last one, as far as she knew, which was far longer than Root had gone without one previously. She didn't want that to change now).

But she needed to get up now, get ready for the day, and look into breakfast. Root tended to eat the most unhealthy things imaginable (or completely forget to eat) when Shaw wasn't around to intervene, so she made sure that when she was here Root actually ate multiple meals a day and that the majority of them weren't frozen food heated up in the microwave.

Unwrapping Root from around her without waking her up proved to be a challenging undertaking, especially prying her shirt out of Root's hand. She ended up carefully slipping out of the shirt and letting Root keep it.

A clothes thief even when asleep. Shaw was impressed.

Root sighed a little in her sleep and curled up tightly around her stolen shirt as if it were a substitute. Shaw unfolded an extra blanket from the end of the bed and settled it over her before she left. Bear watched her go but didn't seem inclined to follow. Either he was being lazy or he'd decided that he needed to stay with Root while she was asleep and Shaw wasn't going to argue either way.

She’d been planning to go for a run first thing, but when her eyes fell on a laptop sitting on the couch she got another idea.

“You around?” she asked when she'd opened the laptop and flopped down on the couch.

_I am everywhere. Therefore I am around._

“Don't be a smartass before eight am.”

_Why is eight am significant?_

“Because…. Never mind.” It was impossible to tell when the Machine was asking a serious question and when she was being difficult on purpose. “What's up with these guys trying to resurrect Samaritan?”

_They are a mix of engineers and agents who worked for Samaritan before its downfall. They were high enough up in the organization that they were privy to many details about Samaritan and its plans, but not high enough up to influence decisions._

“I thought you dealt with all of them. Got them locked up or something.”

_Most of them. Some vanished. I suspect there were contingency plans in place. I have kept watch for any who reemerge. I had hoped the ISA could handle them, but that is no longer an option. The two who died were skilled in both software engineering and combat, Samaritan agents to their core. The three remaining are a bit different._

It was a good thing she and Root had taken care of Martine and Greer then. “Could they actually do it? Bring Samaritan back?”

_If they have a copy of the code Samaritan hid away and a great deal of time and talent, it is possible they could create something that resembled Samaritan. It would not be Samaritan itself, and it is unclear how much of Samaritan’s acquired data it would have access to. Its memories, in your terms._

Shaw looked out the window while she thought that through. The building across the street from them had no windows on the wall facing them (which had been one of the appeals of this place) so she could only look at the patterns of light on the brick. She liked the non-view here, liked their apartment. She didn't intend to let ghosts from the past chase them out of it.

“Wonder if these guys know who we are. Do they know about you?”

_Yes. And it is very likely they know about you and Root and John Reese. Probably not the others._

A disturbing thought occurred to Shaw. “The new Samaritan, we wouldn't be able to fool it with cover identities, would we? It could find us anywhere.”

_That is correct. The cover identities were kept intact by changes to Samaritan’s hardware. This new AI they are building would have different hardware._

“Why don't you want us to kill them then?”

_Killing anyone who poses a threat to me is not an acceptable solution._

“It poses a threat to Root, too, you know.” And her, and Reese, and the rest of the team, but she knew Root was the spoiled favorite here.

_I will consider the options as this unfolds. I will not allow harm to come to any of you if I can prevent it, but I wish to find a better way. I would also like to add that the chances that they can successfully rebuild Samaritan and make something powerful enough to pose a threat before I can counter it are extremely low. They would need significant time and resources and luck._

Shaw nodded figuring that was a good as she was going to get. “So, an important question then. What do you think Root would want for breakfast?”

* * *

 

“Did you spill something on one of my laptops?” Root asked, eyeing the table suspiciously.

It wasn't that Shaw didn't usually cook for her (in fact she cooked for her on a regular basis), but she didn't usually arrange everything on the table all fancy. She'd even made a half-hearted attempt to fold the napkins.

Shaw scowled and then hid it by turning to grab a plate off the counter and shoving it at her.

“You slept in for like a year and I got bored.”

Aware of the fact she'd likely made Shaw self-conscious, Root took the plate from her without further comment and settled down at the table.

On the floor by her feet, Bear whimpered pathetically. Root glanced at the huge plate of french toast on the table and then back down at the clearly-starving-to-death dog.

“Don't even think about it,” Shaw warned.

“Sameen, I would never…”

“Uh-huh, right. It was someone else who let him eat so many table scraps he threw up on the carpet that one time.”

“Sounds like something John would do. He's a total push-over with animals. Look at his cat situation.” The fact she was largely responsible for his cat situation was besides the point.

“John was in Connecticut that weekend.”

Root sighed as loudly and dramatically as she could manage. “Fine, I guess poor Bear will have to starve to death.”

“Good. Glad we've settled that.” There was the tiniest hint of a smile around Shaw’s lips.

They were mostly quiet throughout breakfast and didn't bring up the plan for the day until after when Shaw was sprawled across the couch recovering. Root perched on the arm rest by her feet, watching her.

“If this address is really where they're set up, then we should destroy all the hardware they've got there,” Shaw said. “Might not stop them, but it'll slow them down.” She squirmed around a little, getting comfortable. She might have said they were going to get to work right after eating, but she didn't look like she was in any real hurry.

“They can rebuild somewhere else as long as they have a copy of whatever Samaritan code it is they've found,” Root pointed out. They couldn't be sure they'd found any code, but it seemed likely.

“You have a better plan?”

Kill all of them, burn the place down, and salt the earth. But the Machine didn't want that and Root tried very hard to respect Her wishes. Their relationship now was more of a partnership than it had been when they'd started, but that didn't mean she would ignore Her wishes.

“I guess we'll see when we get there,” she said without much enthusiasm.

Shaw poked her in the leg with one foot. “You good?”

“I'm fine.” And she was, mostly. She wasn't scared of a bunch of former Samaritan peons, not really. “It's just...we won. It lost. I don't want us to get dragged back into all of that again.”

“That's not how this is going to play out, okay?” Shaw prodded her leg again and Root smacked her foot playfully.

“You sound awfully sure about something we barely have any details on.”

“Side effect of always being right.”

Shaw continued to poke at her until Root had no choice but to climb on top of her on the couch and attempt to subdue her. It turned into a brief, overly-handsy wrestling match that ended with Root pinned down on the couch, Shaw sitting on top of her and looking pleased with herself.

“This whole mess will get sorted out in no time. Just trust me, okay?” Shaw didn't look completely focused anymore, but her words were sincere.

Root tried to free herself enough to flip them back over. “You know I do.”

Since Shaw wasn't budging an inch, Root went to plan B and shoved her hands into the back pockets of Shaw’s pants to distract her while trying to shift her weight under her to throw her off balance.

Shaw almost slipped, but caught herself with a hand on Root's shoulder. She looked down at her and grinned. “Gonna be that kind of a fight, is it?”

“Obviously. And you wouldn't have it any other way, would you?”

Shaw pulled Roots hands away from their current pursuit and pinned them to the couch above her head.

“Oh, there are a lot of ways I'd like to have you.”

Root smiled up at her adoringly. Shaw was so cute when she was proud of herself for getting off a particularly good one liner.

“Not that I'm complaining in the slightest, Sameen, but the stake out? Isn't John waiting for a call from us?”

“He can wait a little longer.” Shaw leaned down over her.

Root didn't ask again.

* * *

 

“I'll be right back,” Shaw said and slipped out of the car before Root could protest.

That had been twenty minutes ago and Root was beyond ready to ignore both the Machine and Reese and take off after her.

“If something had happened to her, the Machine would’ve let you know,” Reese pointed out for the fifth time.

The Machine had actually been letting Root know exactly what Shaw was up to right up until she'd broken into the building they were watching through the fire escape window. There were no cameras inside and there was some kind of signal jammer that made it hard for Her to track Shaw.

“What if she needs backup?”

Reese pinched the bridge of his nose. She knew that he was probably thinking the same thing and that only some misguided attempt to be reasonable and responsible had kept him from busting in after Shaw himself.

“Give her ten more minutes, like she asked.”

Root was quite aware that Reese had a little stun gun in his pocket and was ready to use it if she tried to run off and do something dumb. It was cute he thought that would work.

“It's Samaritan, John. You don't wait in the car when it's Samaritan.”

She could see how conflicted he looked. She just needed to apply a tiny bit more pressure to get him to agree.

“If you were in there, Shaw would have gone after you ten minutes ago.”

Reese folded. “Okay, what did you have in mind?”

“If Shaw's in trouble we'll need to create a distraction. I have some C4 in the trunk.” She'd thought this whole thing out.

In her ear the Machine was trying to point out all the reasons this was a terrible idea. That was hardly a deterrent though; Root had made terrible ideas work just fine in the past thank you.

“We don't need C4. I hope. Shouldn't we just sneak in?”

“I packed your grenade launcher as well.” Root gave him her most winning smile.

She watched the expressions on John's face while he fought a losing battle with himself.

“Fine, but we've got to be smart about this.”

“Be smart about what?” The voice over the comm startled both of them.

“Shaw!” Root failed to keep the relief out of her voice. “Where are you?”

“Heading back to the fire escape in a second. You two better not have run off and done something dumb.”

“How're you getting through to us from inside?” Reese asked.

“Found what they were using to jam the signals and smashed it. Also set up a wireless camera in there. The Machine should be able to get a much clearer picture of what's going on now.”

The Machine was already relating what She was seeing to Root. The ex-Samaritan groupies had set themselves up on the third floor of a mostly-empty apartment building in Brooklyn. There was an impressive collection of hardware set up inside, not nearly as much as Samaritan had run on, but perhaps enough to power the earliest stage of a baby AI. And while there were no lines running to the outside world, there were an enormous number of external hard drives plugged into the servers. A sampling of data for the new Samaritan to learn from, in the Machine's opinion.

“They downloaded the internet for it?” Reese asked when she filled him in.

“Yes, John, they downloaded the entire internet. All of it. Onto a handful of hard drives.”

Reese scowled. “Okay, it was kind of a dumb question. I'm just trying to figure out what they're up to.”

The Machine played an urgent warning in Root's ear.

“Shaw!” She was out of the car and headed towards the fire escape before she'd even thought it through. She vaguely registered the sounds of John grumbling loudly after her and getting out of the car.

Three of the ex-Samaritan agents had come back and were headed right for Shaw, and while the Machine was urging her to wait and let Shaw handle it, Root wasn't taking any chances.

Shaw had pushed a dumpster under the fire escape ladder so she could reach it and Root followed her lead and pulled herself up.

“Root!” John's voice was a hissed whisper from below.

She paused to look back at him; he'd better not try anything dumb to stop her from going after Shaw.

John hefted the bag of surprises she'd packed in the trunk. “You forgot this.”

She waited the two minutes it took for him to scramble up to where she was.

“Let's go help her out,” Reese said after they'd both armed themselves to the teeth.

“You're not the worst person to work with,” she conceded.

John sighed. “Wow. Thanks.”

Root opened the window that Shaw had used to enter the building and slipped inside, John following after her.

* * *

 

Shaw sighed, deeply disgusted. Why did the bad guys always insist on talking to her? She missed the old days where she could shoot people from a distance without having to worry about them monologuing at her.

“We know exactly who you are,” the tall, skinny guy with an attempted beard was saying.

Shaw had picked him out as the leader of the bunch immediately. The big guy to his right looked like muscle, ex-military maybe, and the short guy in the back had probably never been in a fight in his life.

But there were three of them and one of her and they all had guns so right now she needed to stall.

“You read your dead boss's file on me. Congrats.” She wouldn't have been surprised if Samaritan had put wanted signs with their faces on them in every Samaritan facility break room in the country.

The short guy in the back shifted restlessly. “Frederick, we need to…”

“Be quiet,” the leader said sharply.

He must be Frederick Williams, Shaw figured. The Machine had files on most of these guys, and Shaw didn't remember all the details from her quick glance through this morning, but she’d gotten enough to provide her with some insight.

“But she….”

“I said shut up, Jeffrey.”

“My name is Jeremy now!”

“No, it's not. Just...shut up, okay?” Frederick was scowling, but he never took his eyes (or gun) off Shaw.

“But she killed….”

Frederick held up the hand that wasn't holding his gun to cut off Jeffrey/Jeremy’s attempt to continue.

Who had she killed? There were plenty of options. And what was with Frederick not liking this guy's name change? Though she wasn't a big fan of the name Jeremy because of….

A thought occurred to her. “Jeremy? Wait, like Jeremy Lambert?” She saw from their reactions that she'd scored a direct hit. “Are you the head of his fan club or something?” That didn't sound quite right. “Are you his _entire_ fan club?” Much better.

“You're the one that killed him!” Little Jeremy/Jeffery in the back was shaking with rage and Shaw eyed his gun carefully. He probably barely knew how to use the thing, and she didn't trust him not to accidentally fire it.

“Oh, right. Yeah, I guess that did happen. I forgot.” It hadn't been the most interesting part of that day by a long shot.

Jeremy looked like he was actually going to shoot her (or the ceiling), but Frederick waved a hand at him and he relaxed his gun a little. He continued to stare at her with undisguised loathing though. Honestly, what sort of loser had _Lambert_ of all people as their idol?

“The thing is, Ms. Shaw,” Frederick continued as if Jeremy's outburst hadn't happened, “Samaritan had big plans for you. It wanted to recruit you as one of its top agents, and I'd like to offer you a second chance at that. Imagine having the most powerful AI in history want to recruit you, specifically. You should feel honored.”

“How is it the most powerful if it got its ass kicked?” As far as she was concerned, the most powerful AI in history _had_ already recruited her and then tried to set her up with its human interface. She vaguely recalled Samaritan making some pitch to get her on board, but most of what she remembered about that day was Root getting shot. Everything else had faded.

“This time will be different.” Frederick sounded very sure of himself.

There was something about his thin smile and self-assurance that set Shaw on edge. From the little she'd read about these guys in the Machine's files, she'd gotten the impression that he and Jeremy were entitled assholes who'd joined Samaritan fresh out of grad school. Frederick definitely fit her expectations so far.

But even with her low opinion of their opponents, it still felt like something was missing from all this. Might as well use her time to fish for more information.

“You think you stand a chance with this setup?” she asked, gesturing around the room. “This thing’ll be fried before it can even google world domination.”

Frederick smirked. “You're right, of course. This is nothing. This place was where we started--it's only a small part of the puzzle. A very small part.”

Shaw held back her own smirk. Hook, line, and sinker.

“If you seriously want me to consider helping, then you're going to have to show me something more impressive than this.” She waved a hand at a teetering stack of hard drives. “Because so far I'm underwhelmed.”

Frederick was already nodding before she finished, even though behind him Jeremy looked like he'd swallowed a particularly disgusting bug.

“I think we can show you something that will convince you.”

“What are we waiting for then?” She needed to get them moving before Root and Reese showed up like the calvary.

Root was going to be so pissed at her.

* * *

 

“Why is it that when I want to do something it's ‘rash’ and ‘unnecessarily dangerous’, but when Shaw does it it's fine?”

Reese decided that sometimes the best answer was silence and focused on driving.

At least Root hadn't really freaked out. She'd been understandably agitated when the Machine had informed her that Shaw had let herself be captured, but she hadn't attempted to cut a bloody swath across Brooklyn to get her back. Yet.

The fact both of them had tracking devices planted on Shaw (plus the Machine watching her) was probably helping to keep her calm. It was easier to stay under control with a clear plan.

“They’ve stopped up ahead and are going into some big industrial-looking building.” Root had her phone out and was scowling at the gps app. “She says Shaw is fine, though one of the men has a bloody nose now.”

Knowing Shaw, the guy was lucky that was all she'd done.

“Does the Machine have any way of hearing what they're saying?”

Shaw had gotten a message to them through the Machine that she was going with the former Samaritan agents willingly to try and find their headquarters. It wasn't a bad plan, in Reese’s opinion, but he didn't like that Shaw was no longer responding over her comm.

“Yes, but She can't see anything inside the building they're headed into.” Root sounded stressed which in turn made Reese stressed. He probably wouldn't be able to stop Root if she got it in her head to go after Shaw. Hell, earlier he'd gone in right after her.

“She's getting information on who owns it, though,” Root continued, unaware of his concerns. “Not sure what that will…oh.”

Reese glanced away from the road. Root looked deeply lost in thought.

“Root?”

“Why did Control think she could get them to share their work on Samaritan?”

“Uh, what? Where am I turning?”

“Pull over up ahead.”

She waited until he'd parked before looking at him expectantly.

“Because Control could have them all locked up in the deepest, darkest government prisons she could find otherwise.” He didn't get where this was going.

“Possibly, yes, though they're mostly from fairly wealthy families so it might cause a little commotion. But that's the stick. I've...dealt with Control before. She likes having the carrot and the stick. So what's the carrot?”

“Money.” It was always money. Who _was_ actually funding these guys?

“Money,” Root agreed. “Who's backing this endeavor?”

“You said they had wealthy families….”

“Yes, but not filthy rich. Not the type of money it would take to build something like Samaritan. Except for--” Root tapped her phone screen a few times. “--this guy.”

Reese looked at the record she'd pulled up. Frederick Williams, the supposed leader of the group. He'd held a fairly low rank at Samaritan compared to the others he'd recruited, but his father was ridiculously rich. Inherited family money, it looked like, in banking, real estate, and a few other areas.

“Let me guess,” Reese said, “his dad owns the building Shaw just got a ride to.”

“His dad owns quite a lot of real estate from the looks of it. And based on what She can find, there's a decent chance he has no idea what little Frederick is up to.”

“Would he care?”

Root shrugged. “Probably not about that, but there are plenty of things he does care about that we can use.” She sighed. “The Machine wants us to go talk to him.”

“Right now?”

“She says She can hear Shaw now and she's fine and we only have a short window of time to deal with the dad right now.”

Since Root had been the one threatening to blow up an entire building earlier because Shaw had been a little late checking in, Reese was suspicious about this change of heart.

“I trust them,” Root said softly. “It's hard to let go and trust anyone when either of them is in trouble, but I _do_ trust them. And right now the best way to keep all of us safe is to put an end to this.”

“Let's go end this then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> team rocket should never be left unsupervised
> 
> themaarika did amazing art of shoot cuddling from the beginning of this chapter: [check it out](https://themaarika.tumblr.com/post/174312990453/shoot-cuddles-based-on-asleepinawells-fic-check)!


	4. A Lot Of Shiny Computers or He Should Have Gotten The Thin Mints

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't decide which title I liked better so I kept both,

“Well, this is certainly a...thing you've got here.”

Shaw looked out over the floor of the huge building they'd entered. It was an enormous, open room partially filled with server racks. The little metal bridge on the second level that they stood on gave them a view of the whole place.

It reminded her a bit of the Samaritan warehouse she and Root had broken into in New Jersey ages ago, though not nearly as impressive. These guys had a long way to go before replicating even one of Samaritan’s facilities and it had occupied well over a hundred by the time they'd taken it down.

“This is just the beginning,” Frederick said. He wasn't watching her, but instead gazing out over the room, his eyes glowing.

Little Jeremy and the ex-military guy (whose name she'd found out on the ride over was Henry) were both keeping an eye on her. Jeremy still had pieces of bloody tissue stuffed up his nose from when his whiney accusations about her killing Lambert had finally been too much.

Henry had seemed to think she'd killed their other two team members, and while she'd been in the room with the guy who'd thrown himself out a window, she couldn't take credit for either of those. And Henry was the only one who appeared to care about them. Frederick had shrugged off their losses as casualties of war (whatever the hell that meant. The only war she saw being fought here was with her patience), and Jeremy had been too busy bleeding all over the car to voice an opinion.

She could have taken down Henry easily enough, and Jeremy was barely even worth mentioning, but she didn't want to beat the crap out of them and escape yet. Well, okay, she did very much want to beat the crap out of them, but if she did that then Frederick might stop telling her all the details of his secret plan.

“Listen Frederick, no offense, you've got a lot of really shiny computers here and that's great, but what the hell are you actually planning on doing with all of this?”

Frederick broke away from staring out at the machines and turned back to face her.

“We’re bringing Samaritan back, of course. And this time the right people will be in charge.” He pushed off from the bridge railing and motioned for them to follow him.

“Okay, just checking, but you do know that Samaritan was actually in charge of itself, right?”

Frederick waved this away. “Of course, but it relied on the wrong people.”

“Except for Mr. Lambert,” Jeremy corrected.

Frederick looked pained. “The people who could have been the biggest assets to it were kept from their full potential, and without their support the rival AI was able to strike against it.”

There was an office at the end of the bridge that looked out over the floor and Frederick unlocked the door and ushered them inside.

“Uh-huh, and I suppose you lot are the ones kept from your full potential?” Shaw asked as she gave the office a once over. There wasn't a lot there other than a desk, some chairs, and a big tv screen up on the wall, but the safe near one wall caught her eye.

“Samaritan will recognize my worth when we bring it back.” Frederick sat down at the desk and motioned for her to take a seat across from him. She leaned against the wall instead.

She wished she could access those files the Machine had shown her earlier right now. She felt like she had a pretty good picture of what was going on here, but she wanted to confirm it.

The two men who'd ended up dead had both been Samaritan agents to the core, but Frederick and Jeremy lacked the self-discipline she associated with Samaritan agents. They might be clever enough to use a shadow map and limit their digital footprint, but they saw this as a game. And in Frederick’s case, a game he felt entitled to win. She wondered if he would even have gotten into college without his daddy's bank account. It must have really irked him when Samaritan hadn't promoted him to the top.

She wanted to shoot him now, even if it was just in the kneecaps. It would have been easy since they hadn't even tried to take her gun away. Sure Henry had his gun trained on her and they'd zipped-tied her wrists in the car after she'd punched Jeremy (which had pissed her off; only Root was allowed to do that), but Frederick just didn't seem to see her as a threat. He hadn't even bothered to tie her hands up again after she'd gotten out of the first zip-tie.

At first she'd thought it was because he knew something she didn't, but more and more she figured that he was actually that convinced of his invulnerability.

“I'm sure Samaritan will absolutely see your full potential,” she agreed in a patronizing tone that Root would have been proud of. “Now, what would I get out of all this, Freddy?”

Frederick stiffened. “Don't call me Freddy.”

She appeared to have struck a nerve. Interesting.

“Fine, whatever. What would I get out of this?”

“Samaritan can give you anything you desire. Anything at all. For example, you'd be amazed what sort of information we got out of the files it left behind about your associates.”

“My associates?” Control had used the same word, but it sounded a little out of place coming from Frederick. Like he was taking phrases out of some supervillain handbook.

“Yes, for instance, the man called John Reese--though that's not his real name of course. I have all sorts of data about him.”

She'd seen Reese at his worst: exhausted, desperate, and on the verge of tears from trying to get five hyper kittens into a single cat carrier. Times like those bared the soul. What secrets could he possibly have left that mattered? Although there was one thing…. “Do you have Reese's high school record by any chance? I made a bet with myself that he flunked PE.”

“All that information and more could be yours,” Frederick promised.

Shaw was impressed. She'd never met anyone even half as oblivious to sarcasm as this guy. This was a golden opportunity.

“You can't even imagine the things it dug up on the other woman. What was her name?”

Shaw stared blankly at him. “Not sure who you mean.”

“She called herself Root,” little Jeremy said from by the door. He was trying to pull the tissue out of his nose without much success.

“Might be I know her.”

She knew that Samaritan would have had files on all of them, but there were parts of Root's past that she guarded closely and hadn't shared with anyone other than Shaw. The idea of that sitting on some dusty Samaritan drive being pawed through by a bunch of smarmy assholes made her want to shoot all of them very badly.

Soon, she promised herself.

“Yes, Root.” Frederick put his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair. “Though I think she had some other names. Did you know that?”

“It may have come up once or twice.”

“You could find out everything about her. Don't you want to know if she's been hiding things from you?”

“Root hides things from me all the time. When I want to find out what she's hiding, I go ask her.” And these days Root usually told her.

Frederick looked at her blankly, as if not quite processing her words.

Shaw narrowly held back an eye roll. “Uh, I mean, yes. I sure would like to know. How about you let me see this new Samaritan you're working on in person and have it tell me something I don't know. I bet that would impress me.”

Behind Frederick, the ex-military guy, Henry was grimacing in a way that reminded her a little of Reese. He was the only one of the three who appeared to operate even marginally on the same plane of reality as the rest of the world. Frederick and Jeremy might be fancy software engineers, but they were dumb as bricks.

Shaw gave Frederick her fakest smile. “Take me to your leader.”

* * *

 

“How do you plan to get in there?” John asked.

In the past, questions like that from Reese would have been tinged with doubt, but now he only sounded curious. Root was pleased with this development.

“I'm going to lie to the nice man at the security desk, then the Machine will alter his digital records, and he'll let us go straight up to meet Frederick Williams Sr.”

The amount of trust people placed in information on a computer was so convenient, Root mused as she led John into the lobby of the fancy financial district building. She was about to waltz in to meet a wealthy, powerful man with no appointment and she hadn't even bothered to change out of the jeans she'd worn for the stakeout.

“We're here to see Mr. Williams,” she told the security guard at the desk. “Is this the elevator we take right here?” She motioned at the elevator doors behind the desk that were clearly not for public use.

“No one sees Mr. Williams without an appointment,” the guard said, his tone implying what he thought the likelihood of her having an appointment was.

Reese loomed behind her, doing his best impression of a threatening brick wall. Which was exactly what she needed him to keep doing.

“Are you implying that Mr. Williams would cancel an appointment with _me_?” Root put as much indignation into her voice as she could muster.

“He doesn't have any…” The guard paused and looked down at his computer and frowned. “Oh, wait.” He looked over Root in her leather jacket and jeans and Reese standing behind her like a bodyguard in his suit. Root could almost see him putting together the pieces incorrectly. Who else but someone extremely important and/or wealthy would dare to show up in jeans to an appointment with Mr. Williams?

And the computer log undeniably showed him the appointment and even provided a great head shot of her that he could verify against.

“My apologies, Ms. Booth. The system has been acting up all day.” The guard scrambled to his feet. “Let me unlock the priority elevator for you. Will you require an escort?”

Root stared him down without responding until he swallowed heavily and hurried to unlock the elevator for them.

Once the doors had shut behind them and the elevator was ascending, Root let out a tiny giggle. It’d been too long since she'd gotten to do something like that.

“You're enjoying this too much,” Reese complained, though he sounded amused.

Mr. Williams was, of course, on the top floor of the building. He had the entire floor as his ‘office’ in a building he rarely went to in a city he didn't usually stay in. According to the Machine, he kept the office here for his visits when he flew in, and he was scheduled to leave again tonight which was why She had impressed the urgency of the matter upon Root. They needed to deal with him now.

“Who the hell are you?”

Frederick Williams Sr. rose from one of the upholstered couches in front of an enormous tv mounted on the wall. The entire space looked more like someone's dream rec room than an office, which was probably the point.

“Oh, us? We're here selling girl scout cookies. John, show him the cookies.”

Reese took his gun out. “I recommend the thin mints.”

“Now John, we've been over this. That's a semi-automatic pistol, a very dangerous weapon used to kill people, not a cookie.” She smiled in a way that was anything but reassuring. “You'll have to pardon my associate here. Sometimes customers get thin mints, and sometimes they end up full of bullets. Terrible for business, but what can you do?”

Usually she didn't let John play the bad cop, but this was too much fun.

Williams stared at them, torn between confusion and rage. He reached for the phone next to the couch.

“I'm calling security.”

Root wandered further into the room and hopped up to sit on the edge of a desk that looked like it had never been used. “Unfortunately that isn't an option. You see, all communications in or out of this room are currently unavailable. Including the security cameras.”

The Machine was still accessing the cameras, but no one else could.

Williams slowly put down the phone and looked back and forth between them. “What do you people want with me? Money?”

“Not exactly. We're here to talk about your son.”

The look of confusion on Williams’ face faded and was replaced by tired resignation. “Freddy? What's he done this time?”

Root's eyes narrowed. This time?

The Machine took that moment the remind Root that she wasn't supposed to shoot Williams Sr. And okay, maybe her hand had twitched for her gun, but she wouldn't actually have shot him. Probably.

“Warehouse out in Brooklyn full of computer servers. Ring a bell?” Reese asked.

Williams sat back down on the couch. He didn't look worried about Reese’s gun anymore. “Freddy said he was working on some new search algorithm. Something he thought he could use to compete with google. Ludicrous, I know, but it’s keeping him out of trouble so what's the harm?”

A search algorithm to compete with google. Well, that wasn't a complete lie in some ways.

“Let's just say little Freddy has bitten off more than he can chew,” Root said. “And you're going to pull his funding.”

“Or what? You'll shoot me?” Williams scoffed. “You wouldn't dare.”

The Machine once again patiently reminded Root that they needed him alive.

“Shooting you would be a waste. No, you're willingly going to withdraw your support. Check your phone.”

They were cutting off all signals to this room, but since the Machine was responsible for that, She could still send stuff in.

Williams looked at his phone for a long time. “I'd ask where you got this, but you wouldn't tell me, would you?”

“Does it matter?”

“I suppose not.” Williams put down phone and looked them both over more thoroughly than he had before. “I must say, I'm drawing a blank on who you two work for or why you care what Freddy does with a couple of computers, but I suppose that doesn't matter either.” He sighed. “So if I cut off my funding for Freddy's project you'll conveniently misplace any incriminating documents you might have?”

Root smiled with all her teeth and tilted her head to one side. “Well, there may be one or two more things we need.”

* * *

 

“ _This_ is your new Samaritan?” Shaw wasn't sure what she'd expected, but it hadn't been this.

The big screen on the wall that Frederick had plugged into the laptop he’d gotten out of the safe had a white screen and flashing cursor that she’d have recognized anywhere, but that part seemed largely for show. While the fledgling AI did seem to recognize at least some speech and voice commands, Frederick had to resort to typing commands in a lot, and more often than not the commands would throw an error.

“All its core code is here on the servers”, Frederick explained, gesturing at the network cable that ran from the laptop to the wall. “We just need time to get everything working. And since we can't risk the chance of the other AI finding it, we can't give it access to what it needs to really be able to learn and grow yet.”

“I'm sure it's code isn't only here on these servers though, right?” Shaw asked wondering if he'd be dumb enough to answer.

“If we backed it up anywhere else it would be easier for that inferior AI to find it. No, it's safest right here.” Frederick patted his laptop proprietarily.

Which meant if they blew up the servers here and whatever was in that apartment then they'd have wiped out all instances of this version of Samaritan’s code. These clowns really were exceptionally dumb, not that she was complaining.

Shaw wondered what the ‘inferior AI’ thought of all this. She wasn't sure if the Machine could keep tabs on her right now, but she suspected she must be able to at least to some degree based on the fact Root hadn't blown a hole in the side of the building yet.

Frederick was talking again. “This copy of its code only has a handful of actual data from the original. Information on you and your associates and your AI, some assorted files on various government officials, other odds and ends. But with your help, I think we can change all this.”

Shaw looked at the jumble of errors on the screen. “I'm not really a programmer.”

“We don't need another programmer. We need your knowledge of the other AI and its remaining agents. You can help us dispose of them.”

“So I help you dispose of them and in return I get to be buddies with Samaritan?”

“You'll be one of its top agents, reporting directly to me.”

“To us,” Jeremy corrected from the other side of the room. Frederick didn't appear to have heard him.

“Hmmm, thanks, but no thanks.”

Everyone in the room turned to stare at her.

“What? You really thought that would sell me?” Shaw shook her head. “Your sales pitch could use some work.”

“You've seen Samaritan, talked to it. You know its power. Imagine how much more it could be with the right person in charge.”

“First off, Frederick, you're right. I did meet Samaritan. We had a great little chat right before our inferior AI kicked ten types of crap out of it.” Shaw looked up at the blinking cursor in the middle of the screen. Did whatever copy of the code this was have any memories of that? Probably very unlikely timing-wise. “And if it weren't for the fact that a lot of people would end up dead, I'd love to watch this whole thing backfire in your face. Because Samaritan doesn't take orders. There was never a human in charge of it. It was in charge of all of you, and if you never made it out of the kiddie leagues it's because Samaritan didn't want you to.”

Frederick’s cheeks were turning red and his hands were gripping the edge of the desk.

“Its judgment was being clouded by…”

“It was an AI. Their judgment doesn't get clouded. Not that way, anyway.” The Machine’s judgement sometimes got a little...lopsided around Root, but that was different. “What I'm getting at here Freddy is you just didn't make the cut. Samaritan had Jeremy Lambert, someone who wasn't worth the bullet I wasted on him, at a higher rank than you.”

“Hey!” Little Jeremy had his gun out again, but Shaw wasn't particularly worried about him.

“I bet the only reason Samaritan hired you in the first place was the same reason you were able to recruit this lot.” She gestured at Henry and Jeremy. “Your daddy's money.”

Frederick’s face was blotchy with rage now. “Shoot her!” he snapped at Henry.

Henry had his gun half-raised, but he hesitated, his eyes going back and forth between Frederick and Shaw.

Which was exactly when Root finally got around to blasting a hole in the side of the building.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> always get the thin mints. actually the thanks-a-lots are the best.
> 
> included a vague homage to terry pratchett.


	5. Shaw Did That On Purpose

“Are you sure he'll actually hold up his end of the deal?” Reese asked as he weaved their car through traffic.

“She says he will.” Root peered out the window, willing the car to go faster. The Machine had told her that Shaw was fine, but she wanted to see for herself. "He's more interested in protecting his money than his son."

“Doesn't feel right letting him get away with all the stuff he’s involved in just to take down his idiot son.” Reese grimaced. “If the dad hadn't been such a piece of work, maybe his kid wouldn't have turned into an evil minion.”

“Maybe, maybe not. And at some point it stops being the parent's fault. There's enough blame to point at both of them.”

“Agreed.”

“Also, Williams Sr. is going to go tragically bankrupt over the next few years. She's making sure it happens in a way that won't hurt all the people his companies employ.”

“That's...ethical of her,” Reese said. He sounded like he approved and was surprised by his own approval.

Reese pulled the car up into a no-parking zone in front of the building Shaw was in. They'd stolen this car so it wasn't like it mattered if the police towed it. There were always more cars to steal.

“Give me a second,” Root said when he got out. She was eager to go after Shaw, but there was something that needed to be taken care of first. Reese nodded and waited near the car on the sidewalk.

“I still really want to kill them,” Root said aloud to the empty car. “I don't think I'll ever reach a point where I don't see that as a solution to problems like this. But maybe there's a compromise here.”

She hadn't discussed what they were going to do about Frederick and co with the Machine since yesterday, but she knew that when the Machine had sent her to deal with Frederick’s dad, it had been Her way of offering Root an alternative. Without his dad to back him or bail him out, Frederick Jr was on his own.

“It isn't enough to cut off his funding, though, or even have him arrested. He _knew_ what Samaritan was and what it had done, and he wanted to bring it back. He doesn't get to walk away from that.”

The Machine played a few notes that indicated agreement and Root's eyebrows shot up.

“Didn't think you'd care what happened to him once the threat was gone.”

The Machine switched back and forth between words and notes rapidly in Her explanation (when She needed to express an idea She didn't have a established musical representation for, She substituted a word in). The general idea Root got out of it was that She was pissed (Root couldn't think of a better word for it) that a bunch of gross cretins were threatening Her assets (and the rest of the world presumably) because they were too stupid and self-absorbed to understand or care about the consequences.

Apparently this was the Machine putting Her foot down.

The Machine added one extra little progression of notes to the end that made Root's hand tighten around the car armrest.

“I don't want anything to happen to you either.”

Outside the car, Reese shifted from one foot to the other, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible while standing on the sidewalk holding a grenade launcher. At least there was no one in the area currently.

“How about we give them to the ISA?” She hated the idea for several reasons, but it would tie everything up neatly. “From what you and Shaw have found out, none of them understand any of the code they found, so handing them over without it means they're useless to Control. But it's still like we're doing them a favor.”

Plus Control would almost certainly kill them in time. Root wondered if that would deter the Machine from agreeing, but She seemed okay with it. Probably their deaths were too uncertain and too far ahead in time to accurately predict, which meant plenty of humans making their own decisions stood between now and then.

Root breathed out, immensely relieved. They hadn't exactly been fighting about this the last day or two, but they'd been tip-toeing around each other.

“I missed you.” The Machine hadn't been actually gone and had, in fact, still been talking to her consistently, but things had been ever so slightly off and somehow that had carried across into their conversations and made her feel horribly lonely. She'd gotten the impression that the same was true for Her.

It was better when they were on the same page like this, and if having to let the ISA torture someone she’d wanted to kill was what it took, then that was a compromise she was more than willing to make.

Now there was only one thing left.

“I'm glad we've sorted that out, but we've got things to do now.”

The Machine agreed, vehemently.

“Let's go get Shaw.”

* * *

 

The explosion startled all three of the men in the room with Shaw, but she didn't even blink. Between Reese, Root, and herself things blew up a lot (though in Reese’s case it was mostly cars for some reason).

Taking Henry down wouldn't have been that big of a deal under normal circumstances, but with him distracted it was entirely too easy. She knocked his gun out of his hands, doubled him over with a blow from her knee, and then knocked him out with an elbow strike and let him fall to the floor.

She was startled when a gunshot echoed through the room and a hot flash of pain ripped across her left upper arm. She spun around to find little Jeremy staring at his own gun like he'd never seen it before. Had he ever even fired one before?

She sighed in annoyance, crossed the room, and took the gun from his shaking hands.

“I really did not need another scar on that arm, Jeremy.”

Jeremy was stammering, unable to form a coherent sentence. Between the explosion and the gun going off his brain had overloaded.

Shaw weighed the gun in her hand. “Let me show you how to actually use one of these.” And that must have gotten through to him because he looked up in pure terror.

Shaw got a good grip on his gun and slammed him across the face with it, hard enough that he staggered backwards. There was a satisfying crunching noise and he collapsed making some hideous, high-pitched shrieking noises. Shaw grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, dragged him across the floor, and shoved him out the door onto the metal bridge they'd come in by.

“Do yourself a favor and stay there. You move, I'll use the gun in a more permanent way.”

She took his pained whimpering to indicate agreement.

She'd seen Frederick flee around the time she'd moved in on Henry and he was long gone now, but she suspected he wouldn't make it out of the building. She’d really wanted to shoot him, but Root shooting him would be the second best outcome.

She figured Reese and Root would find their way up here soon enough, so she turned her attention to the laptop and tv screen.

“Don't suppose you know if there are any other copies of you code out there somewhere?”

Error messages crawled across the screen.

“Too much to hope for, I guess.”

There was one other thing to check. The safe near the wall only took her a minute to crack and unsurprisingly turned out to be full of hard drives and tape cartridges.

She wondered if one of these has been where they'd found Samaritan’s code originally. She still wanted to know how they'd come across it in the first place, but that could come later.

When she looked back up at the tv screen, the error messages had cleared leaving only the blinking cursor in the middle of the white background. As she watched, words started to appear, one at a time.

_Sameen. Shaw._

“That's right. I'm one of the people who killed the real you, so maybe make a note of that.”

_Sameen. Shaw. Sameen. Shaw._

Just her name over and over again. A little creepy, but she figured the damn thing was only broken.

“Shaw?”

She turned to find Root in the doorway, her eyes flicking between Shaw and the tv. She saw the moment when Root spotted the blood all over her arm and, instead of the fear she'd expected, Root actually rolled her damn eyes. At Shaw.

Since when was Root the one in this relationship rolling her eyes?

“Why do they always hit the left arm?” Root asked and came over to fuss at the graze.

Shaw batted her away. “Don't put your germy hands on it.”

“Sweetie, I've put my germy hands all over you.”

“Infections, Root. Look, there's lots of computer stuff over there. Go play with that instead.”

Root released her and turned to look at the tv screen. “John caught Freddy Jr trying to sneak out. He's bringing him up here but it's taking him a few minutes since he's determined to let poor Freddy’s head bounce off every step on the way up.”

Shaw nodded in approval. This meant she could still shoot him.

“What's wrong with it?” Root asked, motioning at the tv which was still repeating Shaw's name on loop.

“Think it's broken. Never worked too well from what I can tell. None of these guys had the skills to get it running.”

Root inspected the laptop while Shaw snagged the zip-ties out of Henry's pocket and set about securing him.

“I think it's scared of you, sweetie.”

“Samaritan 2.0 is scared of me?” Shaw grinned. “Good.”

“Did it say anything else?” Root asked.

“He got it to answer a few basic questions, but nothing special. It was retrieving information, not thinking or analyzing it.”

“Where do you want this?” Reese entered the room dragging Frederick across the floor behind him. His grenade launcher was cradled in his other arm like a child.

“How about in a wood chipper?” Shaw suggested.

Root’s face lit up at the suggestion. “As fun as that sounds, the Machine and I had a different idea for him.”

“You won't kill me.” Frederick looked fairly woozy (from the stairs no doubt), but he still sounded confident. “My father is….”

“Frederick Williams Sr,” Root finished for him. “Yes, we know. John and I just got back from having a chat with him.”

“How'd that go?” Shaw asked. It explained what had kept them occupied this whole time.

“Well, he didn't want to help support the girl scouts of America, but he _did_ agree to cut off little Freddy’s funding for this project. And he's going to sell this building.”

“My father would never talk to you.” Frederick struggled to pick himself up off the floor. Reese kicked his legs out from under him almost lazily so he fell back to the floor.

“What'd you two have in mind?” Shaw asked Root. She wasn't going to ask about the girl scouts thing. Probably better not to know.

“Consolation prize for the ISA. We'll give them to Hersh.”

“Thought that was what we were trying to avoid?” Reese looked puzzled.

“We don't want the ISA getting their hands on Samaritan’s code. We have that now and once we take care of this place and their apartment that will no longer be an issue.” Root pushed the top of the laptop shut with one finger. “These guys aren't smart enough to have understood or used a fraction of what they got their hands on.”

Frederick opened his mouth to protest and Reese casually shifted his weight and bumped into him, sending his sprawling across the floor.

“And what are we going to do with all the servers down there?” Shaw jerked a thumb at the big room full of humming electronics. “Give them to the Machine as a present?”

“She doesn't want or need them,” Root said. “Probably better off destroying them.” Though she looked a little pained at the idea of destroying all the fancy hardware.

“Sounds fun.” A plan started forming in Shaw’s mind. “I think I know exactly how we should do that.”

* * *

 

Root paused to shake her arms out. Shaw's plan might’ve been incredibly satisfying, but it was also exhausting. Though Shaw didn't seem even slightly tired. She turned to watch Shaw swing her sledgehammer right into one of the server racks. Little pieces of metal pinwheeled away.

Root decided that the great view of Shaw's arms when she hefted the sledgehammer called for at least a five minute break. Also the single bead of sweat running down her neck. Maybe a ten minute break. Or maybe she could convince Shaw to take a longer break back up in the office. Reese could handle things down here for a little bit.

“Root?”

She blinked a couple times and refocused. “Sorry, sweetie, did you say something?”

Shaw rolled her eyes. “You're hopeless.” But she looked pleased. “I said admit it, this was a great idea.”

“Oh, definitely.” Especially with Shaw in a tank top. Only the bandage on her arm blocked the great view.

“Cyber battles between AI gods are all well and good, but there's something satisfying about destroying the bad guy personally.” Shaw rolled her shoulders back and then raised an eyebrow. “You look like you're going to pass out.”

Root realized she'd been holding her breath and exhaled slowly.

“If you’re unconscious you can't keep leering at me,” Shaw pointed out.

“Good point.” Root lifted her sledgehammer off the ground and weighed it in her hands. “And yes, there's something cathartic about this.”

Even the Machine seemed to be enjoying Herself if the uncharacteristically cheerful music She was playing for Root was any indicator.

“It almost makes up for not getting to kill the rest of them,” Root said. Almost.

The three ex-Samaritan agents were spending the night in lockup courtesy of Fusco and Dani Silva, so that Reese could hand them over to Hersh in the morning. While Root was disappointed by the lack of stabbing, she also knew exactly how much fun it wasn't to be at Control's mercy.

And, more importantly, it had been a compromise she and the Machine had agreed on.

As for Samaritan itself, the Machine had finally decoded the string of characters on the post-it note and the resulting password had given Her access to everything on the servers. And since Shaw had gotten it out of Frederick that there were no other copies of this code, this was lights out for Samaritan 2.0.

“Kind of anti-climactic that they were a bunch of incompetent, entitled brats.” Shaw said, examining the remains of the rack in front of her. “Not really the second coming of Samaritan like we were worried about.”

“Incompetent, entitled brats with money.” Root corrected. “It's a dangerous combination. And imagine if the ISA had somehow taken Samaritan’s code from them. Hopefully Control finds a nice ditch for them to rot in after she's done with them.”

“That's her specialty.”

“I think it's…”

Shaw pulled up the bottom of her shirt to wipe the sweat off her forehead. The killer view of Shaw's abs drove whatever Root had been going to say from her mind. Shaw looked up at her and smirked.

Root's eyes narrowed. Shaw had done that on purpose. She dropped her sledgehammer to the floor with a loud clunk and moved in on Shaw. Destroying the rest of the machines could wait an hour.

When Reese came to check on them five minutes later, Root had Shaw pressed up against the side of one of the server racks.

“I'm just...going to go deal with destroying the stuff in their apartment,” Reese said, backing away.

“Good plan,” Shaw agreed not moving her hands from Root's hips. Her fingers were under Root's shirt, thumbs running back and forth lightly over her skin.

Reese's footsteps retreated hurriedly.

“Should have known you'd be into getting it on in a room full of computers,” Shaw teased. “Or is it banging on the corpse of your enemy that does it for you?”

Root wrinkled her nose. “At least this isn't as unhygienic as that sounds. But it still sounds kind of hot. A final fuck you to Samaritan.”

“A literal fuck you.”

“Mmm, yes, please.”

“Well, since you asked so nicely...”

They didn't finish destroying the servers until very late that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> last chapter is a little epilogue to wrap it up. featuring John's kittens.
> 
> themaarika did some truly inspiring artwork of Shaw for this chapter that I may never recover from. it's the best and you can see it [here](https://themaarika.tumblr.com/post/174379750968/its-hammer-time-in-asleepinawells-fic)
> 
> wait! she did another one! [look at how damn cute they are](https://themaarika.tumblr.com/post/174380428808/and-then-they-made-out-also-in-asleepinawells)!


	6. John's Cat Situation

“Do you ever think about the future?”

Root lifted her head a little at Shaw's question. “What do you mean?”

It was late afternoon the day after they'd destroyed the servers, far too late to be lying around in bed, but Shaw had decided they were going to take the day off.

Root hadn't been going to argue with that, especially not when taking the day off meant she got to curl up next to Shaw with her head resting on one of Shaw's hip bones (which wasn't the most comfortable thing ever but she wasn't going to move) while the Machine played quiet music in her ear. Shaw had been propped up on her pillows reading a book for the last hour, one hand idly toying with Root's hair.

Shaw set her book down. “Not completely sure. I'm pretty okay with where I am and not too worried about what comes next, but….” She paused and turned to look out the window. “Guess I never stopped to ask where you saw your life going down the road.”

Root studied Shaw's face. What had brought this on?

“It's not something I've put a lot of thought into,” she said after a minute. She'd had goals in her life, but they'd never been long-term goals. She'd never expected to live this long, so she'd never worried about the future. And once she'd started working for the Machine, she'd figured She would determine her future.

But it wasn't that simple anymore.

Shaw was still looking out the window. Root could tell from her body language that this conversation wasn't something she was completely comfortable with.

“Nothing in my life right now is the way I'd imagined it going,” Root said, thinking through her words carefully, “but I wouldn't change any of it. And as far as the future goes…. I'm not too worried either.”

“But you'd tell me if you were, right? Like if there was something you wanted? Even if you thought that, uh, it might not be something I wanted, too?”

Root struggled to sit up. “I'm not going to wake up one day craving a house in the suburbs with a white picket fence, Sameen.”

Shaw finally turned back, looking disgusted. “Not what I meant. I meant if you decided one day you didn't want to keep working numbers and running into danger every day, you'd tell me, right? You wouldn't keep doing this stuff because you were afraid I'd...leave or something?”

“The Machine tried to make me take some down time while you were out of town and I got so bored I cleaned the subway.”

The corner of Shaw's mouth twitched into a smile. “That must have confused the hell out of Reese.”

Root propped her own pillow up against the headboard of the bed so she could lean back against it and not have to stare straight at Shaw and potentially make her more uncomfortable. “What brought on the questions?”

“The other day when we still didn't know much about this whole second Samaritan thing you said you didn't want to do that again.”

“I meant I don't want to be hunted by an evil AI again, not that I want to live inside a bubble avoiding anything even remotely dangerous for the rest of my life.”

“But if you did wake up one day and decide you wanted to?”

Root smiled and rested her chin on Shaw's shoulder. “I'd ask you to help me pick out a nice bubble.”

She still worried sometimes that she'd wake up one day and find that everything she cared about was gone, but at some point she'd stopped worrying that it would be because Shaw had left. Now it was just a vague, formless fear lurking in the back of her mind on bad days. And lately there'd been a lot less bad days.

“You don't need to worry about me, sweetie. I promise. Leave the brooding to John--he has the face for it.”

Shaw chuckled and relaxed a little. “He's a bad influence. Though, you're a bad influence on him. I know who put his grenade launcher in the car yesterday.”

“We might have needed it.”

“In the middle of Brooklyn?”

“Always best to be prepared.”

“Oh, really?”

Root knew what was coming next but made no attempt to stop Shaw from springing on her and pushing her down across the bed.

“Someone wasn't prepared enough.” Shaw taunted, propped up on her arms above her.

“Maybe I should keep a grenade launcher under my pillow from now on.”

“That'd make things interesting.”

“Might lead to some explo…”

Shaw clamped her hand over Root's mouth. “Whatever pun you’re about to make is cancelled.”

Root smirked against her hand.

“Also, we need to go pick up Bear, so this needs to get put on hold.”

Root raised her eyebrows at that. As if _she_ had been the one who'd decided to pounce. Shaw grinned and took her hand away, and Root immediately pulled her down and kissed her, hard. If she was going to be accused of stalling them then she was going to make sure those accusations weren't baseless.

Shaw managed to free herself a few minutes later. “Root, Bear is waiting for us.”

Only Shaw's dog could distract her in moments like this. Root gave up and released her.

“Fine, let's go get Bear.”

* * *

 

“You two are late.” Reese looked grumpy.

“I kept trying to get Shaw to leave, but she kept...distracting me.” Root smiled down at Shaw and even batted her eyelashes. Shaw stared coldly at her.

“No one here believes that, Root. Not even the cats.”

The cats in question were still mostly kittens (other than Primary Catsset, the mom cat), but they'd been growing a ton. They looked like awkward teenagers now, all gangly on limbs they hadn't quite grown into yet.

Currently they were all under the watchful eye of their dog uncle Bear, who was lying down patiently while the five kittens climbed all over him. The calico kitten that Root had named The Mewchine (a stroke of sheer genius in her correct opinion) was between Bear's front paws lying on her back and playfully batting Bear in the face from time to time.

“Probably a good thing I had to watch him last night,” Reese conceded. “He helps keep them busy so I can actually sleep.”

Bear had been hanging out with the newer team members at the subway yesterday and Reese had taken him home under the correct assumption that Root and Shaw would be busy ‘destroying the servers’ for a while still.

Cat-In-The-Suit, aptly named for his tuxedo markings, was hanging from Bear's head, his paws wrapped around Bear's ears like some type of cat crown. Bear looked up at them sadly and Shaw went to gently pry the kitten off and liberate her dog.

“How did Hersh like the present we got him?” Root asked as they watched Shaw try to get all the kittens off Bear (it was a losing battle; once she'd removed one kitten and started on the next the first one would climb back on).

“Hard to tell with Hersh, but I think the slight twitch of facial expression he gave meant he was pleased,” Reese said. “It also could have meant he was bored, hungry, or contemplating shooting me though.”

Shaw tried to get the kitten Zoe had named Dog to sit by pushing lightly on her hind quarters. Dog rolled over on her back and batted at Shaw with her paws.

Root took her phone out to get a few pictures. Maybe she'd add them to John's photo wall in the subway.

“Will you just hold still?” Shaw growled at the kitten.

“Sweetie, that works on cats about as well as it works on me.”

Shaw glared at her, but Root only smiled and went into the kitchen to get the bag of cat treats out of the cupboard where John hid them. One shake of the bag and the entire kitchen was overflowing with cats.

Shaw stood in the kitchen doorway to watch. Bear poked his head in around her. “Also like you, someone has to resort to bribery to get them to do what they're supposed to.”

“Mutually beneficial bribery,” Root corrected. She gave Beretta (she could never tell Shaw how adorable she found it that she'd named a kitten after one of her favorite guns) a treat and watched her run away to eat it before her siblings could try to steal it.

“I don't want to know.” John joined them in the kitchen. “But I do need to leave soon.”

“You're a terrible host.” Root scratched one of the kittens behind the ears as the Machine filled her in on John's plans for the evening. Apparently Zoe was taking him to some gala as her plus one in the off chance she needed him to loom threateningly at someone. “We'll get out of your hair. Wouldn't do to keep Zoe waiting. But the jacket you were planning to wear has a rip along one of the seams, so you might want to rethink your outfit.”

John grimaced. “I just finished getting cat hair off of it, too.”

“Have fun with that,” Shaw said. She'd picked up Fuzzco, the fluffiest of the kittens by far, and was cautiously petting him, glancing at Bear every few seconds as if to make sure he wasn't getting jealous.

“Ready to go?” Root asked after John disappeared to go assess his wardrobe situation.

“Yeah, let's get out of here before Reese tries to regift us his kittens.”

* * *

 

It was a bit of a walk back from Reese’s apartment, but Shaw didn't mind. She'd slept through her morning run earlier so this would have to make up for it. Plus it meant Bear got to sniff every single tree, sign post, bike rack, and bench along the way.

Root appeared to be in an excellent mood; she had a bounce in her step, and hummed softly under her breath.

It was good to see her relaxed and content again. The threat posed by the ex-Samaritan agents hadn’t turned out to be too serious, but it had obviously set Root on edge.

“About what you asked me earlier,” Root said as they paused to let Bear give a pole a good sniffing.

“Which thing?” Though Shaw could guess.

“When you asked if I'd ever thought about doing something else with my life.”

Shaw didn't really want to talk about it again unless there was a good reason. Relationship conversations were awkward. Necessary, but awkward.

“What about it? Seeing Reese’s woes make you want to retire and raise cats?”

“Hardly. But I was thinking…”

“Always dangerous.”

Root humored her with a smile. “I was thinking that part of the reason we started training Jack, Harper, Dani, and what's her name was so we could take time off if we wanted to.”

Shaw pulled on Bear's leash. She was all in favor of him getting to sniff all the things, but it had been over three minute on one pole now. There were limits. “We're taking time off right now.”

“A day or two here or there. But we could go anywhere in the whole world if we wanted. Surely there's somewhere you've always been dying to go.” Root’s tone was light, almost disinterested, like it was the least important subject ever.

Which meant it was probably very important to her.

“Maybe.” Shaw hadn't thought about travelling for fun much, or at least not in a long time. The ISA hadn't been big on vacation time (and she wouldn't have taken it anyway), and then next thing she'd known she’d been in the middle of an AI war. “I could probably think of somewhere. Why, you wanna go on a tour of the world?”

“Why not? There's no reason we couldn't now. No Samaritan, plenty of time and money, no obligations that can't be covered by others for a while.” She looked sideways at Shaw. “John would have to watch Bear.”

Shaw turned the idea over in her mind. She'd never really thought about it that way, but Root was right. They could do whatever they wanted now.

And with her and Root together there was no way the trip would be a dull, touristy slog. Root had a knack for pitching them head-first into exciting and dangerous situations. She wondered how many countries they could get themselves kicked out of.

“It's not the worst idea I've ever heard,” she allowed.

Root smiled in that aggravating way she did where she thought she knew exactly what was going on in Shaw's mind. “It's something to think about anyway.”

Root changed the topic to what they should get for dinner, but it stayed around in the back of Shaw's mind the rest of the day.

“I think we should do it,” she said later that evening.

Root raised an eyebrow at her, still sweaty and out of breath under her. “Sweetie, we just did. Though if you give me a minute to catch my breath...”

Shaw rolled her eyes. “No, I meant your idea about a trip. We should do it.”

Root’s face lit up.

“Maybe later this year,” Shaw said. “Give Reese a few months to mentally prepare himself.” He was going to sulk. “Though I can't say I'm looking forward to a bunch of long plane flights.”

“But Shaw--” Root's shit-eating grin made Shaw brace herself. “--you could join the mile bi club.” Her eyes were dancing with mirth. “Get it?”

Shaw jabbed her in the side with one finger. “We're both going to forget you said that unless you never want to have sex again.”

Root was giggling too much to answer. Shaw waited for her to stop before continuing.

“It could be fun, though. So, yeah, let's do it.”

Root opened her mouth and Shaw could almost see the thank you forming on her lips, but then instead she threaded her fingers through Shaw's hair and pulled her down into a kiss before rolling them both over.

“You're going to have a great time, I promise.”

“Yeah, it'll be fun to travel again.”

Root leaned down to put her mouth right next to Shaw's ear. “I meant right now, Sameen.”

Oh.

* * *

 

Shaw woke up in the middle of the night to the faint lights of the city streaming in through the open curtains. Root was sound asleep on the other side of the bed, a sprawled mess of limbs half-curled up around Bear.

When they'd started sharing a bed, Root hadn’t moved around much in her sleep. Now anything in her path was in danger of being squeezed like a favorite stuffed animal.

Unsure what had woken her up, Shaw reached for her phone. The Machine had sent her an impressive amount of information about various travel locations. Maybe she was as excited about the trip as Root seemed to be.

“Everything okay?” Root had half-rolled over and was blinking sleepily at her.

“Yeah, didn't mean to wake you.”

Root tugged at her arm until she put her phone away and let herself be pulled back down into bed.

“You sure everything's okay?” Root asked, displacing Bear a little so she could get closer to Shaw.

Shaw waited for everyone on the bed to finish rearranging themselves. “Very sure.” Root's head had ended up on her chest and Bear was draped across one of her legs. This definitely beat waking up by herself in a hotel room on the other side of the country.

They all slept soundly through the rest of the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed. That's the end of this short story, but I'm still updating this AU in the fic Approximate Futures which I'm currently working on 2 chapters for. Also Feedback Loops (basically the smut repository for this AU) I haven't shut the door on yet, though it's a little stalled at the moment. You can find both of those in the Chaos Theory collection that this belongs to.
> 
> I debated a bit over exactly how dumb and lame to make the Samaritan 2.0 minions. Because, yeah, they were _really_ dumb. I wrote them that way because 1) easier to have their plot foiled in a short story, 2) the hilarity of Shaw messing with them, and mostly 3) sometimes really fucking dumb, terrible people with a lot of money and privilege can cause enormous amounts of damage despite how fucking dumb they are. Sometimes it's nice to imagine that there can be consequences for those people, yah know.
> 
> most importantly!!! [check out what themaarika drew for this chapter](https://themaarika.tumblr.com/post/174412222918/more-sketches-based-on-asleepinawells-fic). it includes the kittens.


End file.
